cooking and baking therapy from my very own Yorkshire Bakery

A week last Saturday I took my son to take part in a fabulous Make Your Own Chocolate Bar Workshop at the York Cocoa House. He had a fantastic time. I treated myself to some flavoured chocolate buttons to use in my baking and came across these pretty pastel green coloured buttons delicately flavoured with lemon oil. At first I thought they were mint flavoured but they were lemon, in fact. I thought they would make a lovely topping to a cake and bought some to experiment with.

The day after I was at home and decided to look through my baking stash to see what flavours would go with lemon. After spending a while choosing I decided on coconut and ginger with lemon zest in a flapjack mixture which could then be topped with the chocolate buttons melted down. My kids laughed at the colour of the chocolate buttons saying they looked like snot!

So, on went the oven at about 160oC, and I set to making the flapjacks. Here’s how they were created:

Delicate lemon flavoured chocolate buttons from York Cocoa House. They came in several other flavours. This was a 200g bag.Butter, soft brown sugar and golden syrup were melted together gently in a saucepan.Desiccated coconut was weighed out in a bowl ready to add to the melted ingredients.Porridge oats were also added to the mixture.I chopped up three balls of stem ginger into small chunks. These had been rinsed carefully previously so that all the syrup had come off.I grated the zest of a large lemon to add to the mixture.The lemon, ginger and coconut was all mixed together in the bowl.Once all the wet and dry mixture was combined, it was spooned into a 20cm square, loose bottomed tin which was greased and lined.

The flapjacks baked well for roughly about 1/2 hour in the oven. This was time for me to get the chocolate melted carefully. As this bag of chocolate buttons was about £5 I did not want to waste them!

Once the flapjack was cooled and turned out of the tin I melted the whole bag of chocolate buttons and spread the chocolate mixture on the top of the flapjack.Ready to serve!

When the flapjacks had cooled, my children were asking me what was in them. When I said coconut and ginger, both of them said “Yuck, what did you have to put those in for?” Well, how come when my back was turned, four of the flapjacks had disappeared off the plate! I can’t blame the dog, he was asleep the whole time in his dog basket! Wonder if I can hide broccoli or spinach in a cake? By the following day all dozen pieces had gone. My hubby and I only had one each!

I’m already looking forward to my next trip to York Cocoa House to buy more of these delicious bags of chocolate buttons.

Thanks! I wasn’t sure if it would work but it tasted lovely. The Cocoa House is fab. You will have to come up to York and visit. My son loved his chocolate bar making workshop and I am going to a chocolate cake decorating one in November with the Clandestine Cake Club. x